Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

December 17, 1959

Journey to the Center of the Earth'; Verne Fable Opens at the Paramount

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: December 17, 1959

MOVIEGOERS with claustrophobia or a passion for plausibility or even a taste for the fantastic above and beyond the grotesque are hereby advised to check their harness and enter the cave of the Paramount with great care, in pursuit of its new attraction, "Journey to the Center of the Earth." For this sheer fantasy in glorious color about exploring the interior of the globe is likely to prove a bit oppressive to anyone so disturbed.

It is not that Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett have failed to combine with Jules Verne in attempting to give the imaginations of moviegoers a three-way stretch. They have latched onto Mr. Verne's old fable about a nineteenth-century trip into the earth and have augmented it with several details that manifest the twentieth century and CinemaScope.

On several occasions, their underground explorers note that, quite as important as outer space, is the great mystery of the interior, right here beneath our toes. Their lighting equipment consists of several hand-generated electric lights. And, at one point, they embark, as in Kon-Tiki, aboard a raft on an intra-global sea.

The spelunkers (cave tourists) on this journey are a Scottish geologist, his prize student, the widow of a rival, an Icelandic peasant and a seeing-eye duck. And their journey into the interior (of the earth, that is) becomes a series of lurid adventures that keep them all on considerable edge.

They are chased down extremely narrow passages by massive tumbling rocks, they are caught in underground chambers by fearfully cascading floods, they run into giant meat-eating lizards in the middle of the earth and find the lost city of Atlantis some-where near the fiery molten core.

But it's really not very striking make-believe, when all is said and done. The earth's interior is somewhat on the order of an elaborate amusement-park tunnel of love. And the attitudes of the people, toward each other and toward another curious man who happens to be exploring down there at the same time, are conventional and just a bit dull.

Who else but James Mason plays the leader! They certainly could have got someone who would not be as blasé as this veteran of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And with Pat Boone as his prize student, they don't let him sing a song, down there in the earth's interior. Bing Crosby or Bob Hope would sing. To be sure, Arlene Dahl as the widow does have some little trouble with her stays, but not enough to make it side-splitting. The only fantasy character is the duck.

Even those horrible giant lizards are grotesque without being good. Their only service is to frighten little children, who should be the best customers for this foolish film.